The 2950X and 2990WX are both ThreadRipper 2 chips but are very different beasts under the hood. The 2950X has two active die similar to the original chips while the 2990WX has four active die, two of which utilize an Infinity Fabric link to the other two to communicate to the memory subsystem. The W in the naming convention indicates the 2990WX is designed for workstation tasks and benchmarks support that designation. You will have seen our results here, but there are many other sources to read through. [H]ard|OCP offers up a different set of benchmarks in their review, with a similar result; with ThreadRipper AMD has a winner. The 2990WX is especially important as it opens up the lucrative lower cost workstations market for AMD.

"AMD teased us a bit last week by showing off its new 2nd Generation Threadripper 2990WX and 2950X packaging and specifications. This week AMD lets us share all our Threadripper data we have been collecting. The 2990WX is likely a lot different part than many people were expecting, and it turns out that it might usher AMD into a newly created market."

Widening the Offerings

Today, we are talking about something that would have seen impossible just a few shorts years ago— a 32-core processor for consumers. While I realize that talking about the history of computer hardware can be considered superfluous in a processor review, I think it's important to understand the context here of why this is just a momentous shift for the industry.

May 2016 marked the launch of what was then the highest core count consumer processor ever seen, the Intel Core i7-6950X. At 10 cores and 20 threads, the 6950X was easily the highest performing consumer CPU in multi-threaded tasks but came at a staggering $1700 price tag. In what we will likely be able to look back on as the peak of Intel's sole dominance of the x86 CPU space, it was an impossible product to recommend to almost any consumer.

Just over a year later saw the launch of Skylake-X with the Intel Core i9-7900X. Retaining the same core count as the 6950X, the 7900X would have been relatively unremarkable on its own. However, a $700 price drop and the future of upcoming 12, 14, 16, and 18-core processors on this new X299 platform showed an aggressive new course for Intel's high-end desktop (HEDT) platform.

This aggressiveness was brought on by the success of AMD's Ryzen platform, and the then upcoming Threadripper platform. Promising up to 16 cores/32 threads, and 64 lanes of PCI Express connectivity, it was clear that Intel would for the first time have a competitor on their hands in the HEDT space that they created back with the Core i7-920.

Fast forward another year, and we have the release of the 2nd Generation Threadripper. Promising to bring the same advancements we saw with the Ryzen 7 2700X, AMD is pushing Threadripper to even more competitive states with higher performance and lower cost.

Will Threadripper finally topple Intel from their high-end desktop throne?

You cannot really talk about the new Skylake-X parts from Intel without bringing up AMD's Threadripper as that is the i9-7980XE and i9-7960X's direct competition. From a financial standpoint, AMD is the winner, with a price tag either $700 or $1000 less than Intel's new flagship processors. As Ryan pointed out in his review, for those whom expense is not a consideration it makes sense to chose Intel's new parts as they are slightly faster and the Xtreme Edition does offer two more cores. For those who look at performance per dollar the obvious processor of choice is ThreadRipper; for as Ars sums up in their review AMD offers more PCIe lanes, better heat management and performance that is extremely close to Intel's best.

"Ultimately, the i9-7960X raises the same question as the i9-7900X: Are you willing to pay for the best performing silicon on the market? Or is Threadripper, which offers most of the performance at a fraction of the price, good enough?"

Specifications and Architecture

It has been an interesting 2017 for Intel. Though still the dominant market share leader in consumer processors of all shapes and sizes, from DIY PCs to notebooks to servers, it has come under attack with pressure from AMD unlike any it has felt in nearly a decade. It started with the release of AMD Ryzen 7 and a family of processors aimed at the mainstream user and enthusiast markets. That followed by the EPYC processor release moving in on Intel’s turf of the enterprise markets. And most recently, Ryzen Threadripper took a swing (and hit) at the HEDT (high-end desktop) market that Intel had created and held its own since the days of the Nehalem-based Core i7-920 CPU.

Between the time Threadripper was announced and when it shipped, Intel made an interesting move. It decided to launch and announce its updated family of HEDT processors dubbed Skylake-X. Only available in a 10-core model at first, the Core i9-7900X was the fastest tested processor in our labs, at the time. But it was rather quickly overtaken by the likes of the Threadripper 1950X that ran with 16-cores and 32-threads of processing. Intel had already revealed that its HEDT lineup would go to 18-core options, though availability and exact clock speeds remained in hiding until recently.

i9-7980XE

i9-7960X

i9-7940X

i9-7920X

i9-7900X

i7-7820X

i7-7800X

TR 1950X

TR 1920X

TR 1900X

Architecture

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Zen

Zen

Zen

Process Tech

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

14nm

14nm

14nm

Cores/Threads

18/36

16/32

14/28

12/24

10/20

8/16

6/12

16/32

12/24

8/16

Base Clock

2.6 GHz

2.8 GHz

3.1 GHz

2.9 GHz

3.3 GHz

3.6 GHz

3.5 GHz

3.4 GHz

3.5 GHz

3.8 GHz

Turbo Boost 2.0

4.2 GHz

4.2 GHz

4.3 GHz

4.3 GHz

4.3 GHz

4.3 GHz

4.0 GHz

4.0 GHz

4.0 GHz

4.0 GHz

Turbo Boost Max 3.0

4.4 GHz

4.4 GHz

4.4 GHz

4.4 GHz

4.5 GHz

4.5 GHz

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Cache

24.75MB

22MB

19.25MB

16.5MB

13.75MB

11MB

8.25MB

40MB

38MB

?

Memory Support

DDR4-2666 Quad Channel

DDR4-2666 Quad Channel

DDR4-2666 Quad Channel

DDR4-2666 Quad Channel

DDR4-2666
Quad Channel

DDR4-2666
Quad Channel

DDR4-2666
Quad Channel

DDR4-2666
Quad Channel

DDR4-2666 Quad Channel

DDR4-2666 Quad Channel

PCIe Lanes

44

44

44

44

44

28

28

64

64

64

TDP

165 watts

165 watts

165 watts

140 watts

140 watts

140 watts

140 watts

180 watts

180 watts

180 watts?

Socket

2066

2066

2066

2066

2066

2066

2066

TR4

TR4

TR4

Price

$1999

$1699

$1399

$1199

$999

$599

$389

$999

$799

$549

Today we are now looking at both the Intel Core i9-7980XE and the Core i9-7960X, 18-core and 16-core processors, respectively. The goal from Intel is clear with the release: retake the crown as the highest performing consumer processor on the market. It will do that, but it does so at $700-1000 over the price of the Threadripper 1950X.

Intel launched the first half of its X-Series processor lineup earlier this year, releasing up to the 10-core i9-7900X. But with the upcoming release of AMD's 16-core Threadripper 1950X, the real interest among enthusiasts are the specs of Intel's high core count X-Series parts.

After previously teasing partial specs for these parts, Intel today finally unveiled the complete details, starting out with the i9-7920X (12 cores/24 threads) with a 2.9GHz base and up to 4.4GHz boost clock and topping out with the i9-7980XE (18 cores/36 threads) with a 2.6GHz base and 4.4GHz max boost clock. Check the table below for the complete specifications:

i9-7980XE

i9-7960X

i9-7940X

i9-7920X

i9-7900X

i7-7820X

i7-7800X

TR 1950X

TR 1920X

TR 1900X

Architecture

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Zen

Zen

Zen

Process Tech

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

14nm

14nm

14nm

Cores/Threads

18/36

16/32

14/28

12/24

10/20

8/16

6/12

16/32

12/24

8/16

Base Clock

2.6 GHz

2.8 GHz

3.1 GHz

2.9 GHz

3.3 GHz

3.6 GHz

3.5 GHz

3.4 GHz

3.5 GHz

3.8 GHz

Turbo Boost 2.0

4.2 GHz

4.2 GHz

4.3 GHz

4.3 GHz

4.3 GHz

4.3 GHz

4.0 GHz

4.0 GHz

4.0 GHz

4.0 GHz

Turbo Boost Max 3.0

4.4 GHz

4.4 GHz

4.4 GHz

4.4 GHz

4.5 GHz

4.5 GHz

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Cache

24.75MB

22 MB

19.25MB

16.5MB

13.75MB

11MB

8.25MB

40MB

38MB

?

Memory Support

DDR4-2666
Quad Channel

DDR4-2666
Quad Channel

DDR4-2666
Quad Channel

DDR4-2666
Quad Channel

DDR4-2666
Quad Channel

DDR4-2666
Quad Channel

DDR4-2666
Quad Channel

DDR4-2666
Quad Channel

DDR4-2666 Quad Channel

DDR4-2666 Quad Channel

PCIe Lanes

44

44

44

44

44

28

28

64

64

64

TDP

165 watts

165 watts

165 watts

140 watts

140 watts

140 watts

140 watts

180 watts

180 watts

180 watts?

Socket

2066

2066

2066

2066

2066

2066

2066

TR4

TR4

TR4

Price

$1999

$1699

$1399

$1199

$999

$599

$389

$999

$799

$549

From a pure core-count perspective, the Threadripper 1950X goes up against Intel's i9-7960X, but with a $700 difference in price. With Intel CPUs holding and IPC advantage over AMD, however, it's likely that the i9-7920X, and perhaps even the 7900X, will best Threadripper in certain gaming and productivity workloads.

Also interesting in Intel's announcement today are the base clocks of the 12-core i9-7920X (2.9GHz) and the 14-core i9-7940X (3.1GHz). Intel pushed the TDP of the 7940X to 165W, allowing it to increase the base clock over its 12-core counterpart. This suggests that Intel expects the 14-core 7940X, at a price-point of $1399, to be a popular choice in terms of price-to-performance.

Finally, Intel's release today reveals that all of the upcoming X-Series parts will have 44 PCIe lanes, compared to the 64 lanes AMD is offering on all Threadripper parts. There was some debate in the office this morning about how Intel's 44 lanes should cover most configurations for the foreseeable future, but this still remains one clear advantage for AMD's platform.

Intel's 4- to 10-core processors are already on the market. Intel says that the 12-core 7920X will launch August 28th, while the 14- to 18-core parts will launch about a month later, on September 25th.

The Tech Report recently wrapped up the first part of their review of Intel's new Core i9-7900X, focusing on its effectiveness in production machine. Their benchmarks cover a variety of scientific tasks such as PhotoWorxx, FPU Julia and Mandel as well as creativity benchmarks like picCOLOR, DAWBench DSP 2017 and STARS Euler3D. During their testing they saw the same peaks in power consumption as Ryan did in his review, 253W under a full Blender load. Their follow up review will focus on the new chips gaming prowess, for now you should take a look at how your i9-7900X will perform for you when you are not playing around.

"Intel's Core i9-7900X and its Skylake-X brethren bring AVX-512 support, a new cache hierarchy, and a new on-die interconnect to high-end desktops. We examine how this boatload of high-performance computing power advances the state of the art in productivity applications."

Specifications and Design

Intel is at an important crossroads for its consumer product lines. Long accused of ignoring the gaming and enthusiast markets, focusing instead on laptops and smartphones/tablets at the direct expense of the DIY user, Intel had raised prices and only shown limited ability to increase per-die performance over a fairly extended period. The release of the AMD Ryzen processor, along with the pending release of the Threadripper product line with up to 16 cores, has moved Intel into a higher gear; they are more prepared to increase features, performance, and lower prices now.

We have already talked about the majority of the specifications, pricing, and feature changes of the Core i9/Core i7 lineup with the Skylake-X designation, but it is worth including them here, again, in our review of the Core i9-7900X for reference purposes.

Core i9-7980XE

Core i9-7960X

Core i9-7940X

Core i9-7920X

Core i9-7900X

Core i7-7820X

Core i7-7800X

Core i7-7740X

Core i5-7640X

Architecture

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Skylake-X

Kaby Lake-X

Kaby Lake-X

Process Tech

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

Cores/Threads

18/36

16/32

14/28

12/24

10/20

8/16

6/12

4/8

4/4

Base Clock

?

?

?

?

3.3 GHz

3.6 GHz

3.5 GHz

4.3 GHz

4.0 GHz

Turbo Boost 2.0

?

?

?

?

4.3 GHz

4.3 GHz

4.0 GHz

4.5 GHz

4.2 GHz

Turbo Boost Max 3.0

?

?

?

?

4.5 GHz

4.5 GHz

N/A

N/A

N/A

Cache

16.5MB (?)

16.5MB (?)

16.5MB (?)

16.5MB (?)

13.75MB

11MB

8.25MB

8MB

6MB

Memory Support

?

?

?

?

DDR4-2666
Quad Channel

DDR4-2666
Quad Channel

DDR4-2666
Quad Channel

DDR4-2666
Dual Channel

DDR4-2666 Dual Channel

PCIe Lanes

?

?

?

?

44

28

28

16

16

TDP

165 watts (?)

165 watts (?)

165 watts (?)

165 watts (?)

140 watts

140 watts

140 watts

112 watts

112 watts

Socket

2066

2066

2066

2066

2066

2066

2066

2066

2066

Price

$1999

$1699

$1399

$1199

$999

$599

$389

$339

$242

There is a lot to take in here. The three most interesting points are that, one, Intel plans to one-up AMD Threadripper by offering an 18-core processor. Two, which is potentially more interesting, is that it also wants to change the perception of the X299-class platform by offering lower price, lower core count CPUs like the quad-core, non-HyperThreaded Core i5-7640X. Third, we also see the first ever branding of Core i9.

Intel only provided detailed specifications up to the Core i9-7900X, which is a 10-core / 20-thread processor that has a base clock of 3.3 GHz and a Turbo peak of 4.5 GHz (using the new Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0). It sports 13.75MB of cache thanks to an updated cache configuration, it includes 44 lanes of PCIe 3.0, an increase of 4 lanes over Broadwell-E, it has quad-channel DDR4 memory up to 2666 MHz and it has a 140 watt TDP. The new LGA2066 socket will be utilized. Pricing for this CPU is set at $999, which is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it is $700 less than the starting MSRP of the 10c/20t Core i7-6950X from one year ago; obviously a big plus. However, there is quite a ways UP the stack, with the 18c/36t Core i9-7980XE coming in at a cool $1999.

Core i9-7900X

Core i7-6950X

Core i7-7700K

Architecture

Skylake-X

Broadwell-E

Kaby Lake

Process Tech

14nm+

14nm+

14nm+

Cores/Threads

10/20

10/20

4/8

Base Clock

3.3 GHz

3.0 GHz

4.2 GHz

Turbo Boost 2.0

4.3 GHz

3.5 GHz

4.5 GHz

Turbo Boost Max 3.0

4.5 GHz

4.0 GHz

N/A

Cache

13.75MB

25MB

8MB

Memory Support

DDR4-2666
Quad Channel

DDR4-2400
Quad Channel

DDR4-2400
Dual Channel

PCIe Lanes

44

40

16

TDP

140 watts

140 watts

91 watts

Socket

2066

2011

1151

Price (Launch)

$999

$1700

$339

The next CPU down the stack is compelling as well. The Core i7-7820X is the new 8-core / 16-thread HEDT option from Intel, with similar clock speeds to the 10-core above it (save the higher base clock). It has 11MB of L3 cache, 28-lanes of PCI Express (4 higher than Broadwell-E) but has a $599 price tag. Compared to the 8-core 6900K, that is ~$400 lower, while the new Skylake-X part iteration includes a 700 MHz clock speed advantage. That’s huge, and is a direct attack on the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X, which sells for $499 today and cut Intel off at the knees this March. In fact, the base clock of the Core i7-7820X is only 100 MHz lower than the maximum Turbo Boost clock of the Core i7-6900K!

It is worth noting the performance gap between the 7820X and the 7900X. That $400 gap seems huge and out of place when compared to the deltas in the rest of the stack that never exceed $300 (and that is at the top two slots). Intel is clearly concerned about the Ryzen 7 1800X and making sure it has options to compete at that point (and below) but feels less threatened by the upcoming Threadripper CPUs. Pricing out the 10+ core CPUs today, without knowing what AMD is going to do for that, is a risk and could put Intel in the same position as it was in with the Ryzen 7 release.

"The Alienware Area-51 is our flagship gaming desktop, in this next generation, a new Intel architecture based on ‘Skylake-X’ technology has come to the high end desktop arena; Intel introduces the new Intel Core XSeries processors with a new level of Intel Core i9 options.

Gamers looking for the best that Intel has to offer that love gaming and have creative hobbies that employ resource intensive applications should anticipate the new Area-51 with Intel Core X-series processors. Geared to deliver the best gaming experiences in 4K, 8K and in VR environments, this new rig is powered for gamers running applications that prioritize clock with the 10-core option running at speeds of up to 4.5GHz using stock settings.

The Area-51 featuring Intel Core X-Series is ideal for customers who explore the world of megatasking, doing many system demanding tasks at the same time, and are looking for a complete, reliable solution from a trusted brand."

The Area-51 desktops feature (from Dell):

Iconic triad high quality, uniquely engineered chassis built to deliver exceptional airflow, thermal management, and user ergonomics for daily use and future upgrades